Women’s soccer finishes fourth in A-10
Photo by Brooke Marsh
With eight minutes left in the regular season finale and the game tied at 2-2, University of Richmond’s Ashley Riefner bolted past VCU’s defense, took one touch and tucked in the game winner for the Spiders.
The loss, along with Thursday’s draw at home to Saint Louis University, means that the Rams conclude the season fourth in the Atlantic 10 with a 6-2-2 conference record and 8-3-3 overall record.
On the Lady Rams’ senior night against Saint Louis, the Rams found it difficult to adjust defensively early on as they were outshot by their opponents 9-1 in the first half. The story was reversed in the second half as the Rams defense held stout and the offense outshot the Billikens 10-1.
Senior midfielder Sharon Wojcik nearly found the net on multiple occasions, on one opportunity, the midfielder’s shot was deflected off of the post while the other was saved by Saint Louis’ goalkeeper Hanna Benben, who was able to get her hand on the ball. Despite both teams registering 21 shots, neither could find the target.
The clean slate for the Rams was in due part to the saves of VCU senior goalkeeper Emma Kruse. With five saves on the night and 260 all-time, Kruse broke the record for most career saves for any goalkeeper in the program. An appropriate way for the senior goalkeeper to end her collegiate career.
It was a different story in Sunday’s season finale against the Spiders which saw both teams score five goals collectively.
Freshman forward Kelly Graves got the Rams on the board 13 minutes in when her shot deflected into the goal for her second of the season. As the first half came to a close, the Spiders found their equalizer through Olivia Aha’s 40th minute shot. The spiders took the lead in the 59th minute before VCU’s freshman midfielder Maddi Santo equalized 12 minutes later.
With nine minutes remaining, U of R took the lead when Riefner’s run behind the Rams defense was spotted on a 10-yard pass to put her through for an easy finish past Kruse for the game winner.
“I think Richmond wanted it a little bit more than us and unfortunately I think our girls were looking ahead to the future a little bit with the tournament on Thursday,” head coach Lindsey Martin said. “The game meant a lot to us for sure but I think Richmond just had a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the day.”
The Rams travel to Davidson, North Carolina for the first match of the A-10 Tournament on Thursday with their opponent yet to be determined. Martin believes that finding motivation in her players after the loss to their cross-town rival should not be a problem for the team.
“We’ll be fine motivating ourselves for the tournament, that’s when we know it really matters of course we wanna win every game we play but we just need to realize that we need to do a better job defending,” Martin said.
Fadel Allassan, Staff Writer
Fadel is a sophomore print journalism major. He is fluent in English and French and enjoys writing about politics. // Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
allassanfg@commonwealthtimes.org
